I've been doing market research calls with creative agency owners for the past few months. I wanted to know the words they use to describe their work, what they think they're doing really well behind the scenes, and what's actually broken. Basically, I wanted to ask: what's going on with agency owners? Here's what I found! 👇 New here? I'm Devin Lee I optimize your offers by removing you as the bottleneck so you can serve more clients without sacrificing quality. Get a taste of what I do: 📥...
10 days ago • 2 min read
Airtable was recently acquired by Bending Spoons. All signs point to this being VERY BAD for Airtable users, and the clock is now ticking to find a new tool. If you haven't heard about this, Lex Roman wrote a fantastic story HERE on Revenue Rulebreaker. (Be sure to subscribe to Revenue Rulebreaker HERE for more important news on small biz!) Airtable is a BIG part of my business. I lean on it heavily for my internal admin, I build it for almost every client I work with, and my popular...
16 days ago • 7 min read
My recent fall into the depths of the Heated Rivalry fandom rabbit hole has me exploring romantic plot lines more closely than I ever have before. Through my very academic studies, I have concluded that many two-people-are-meant-to-be-together-but-get-lost-along-the-way plots are all about both parties missing information and context about each other. If they just KNEW some important information that we, the audience, already have - (I recently learned this is called "Dramatic Irony". It's a...
24 days ago • 2 min read
Last week, a prospect told me about an internal tool she cottage-coded for her team using AI. It was pretty cool - and yet! She hasn't rolled it out to her team yet. She wants to tweak it more - something only she can do with her expertise. OOooh that makes me squeal with joy and relief!!! The more I learn about AI, the more confident I feel about my own job security. New here? I'm Devin Lee I optimize your offers by removing you as the bottleneck so you can serve more clients without...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
After over two years of unemployment (minus a few contracts here and there or odd jobs for some friends), my partner, Rob, FINALLY got a full-time job offer. Yay! We have health insurance again! We had some friends over for dinner last week and they asked him all kinds of things about his new job. He said he loves everything about his new company. He says he loves their mission, his coworkers, and the culture. Win, win, win! He also said "I love that they are so supportive yet they don't...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
I've been building out the systems for a PR Agency, and their file storing tool of choice is Dropbox. I don't love Dropbox for a few reasons - but their team has been on Dropbox for a decade, not hating it, and I'm not here to fix what ain't broken! But this week we got into a deeper conversation about why she is still using Dropbox. And the answer was just - that's what she's always used! All of her client files are stored there. Her team overhauled the client folder structure last year and...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
If you've been reading my emails from the past month or so, you might remember me mention the book Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. The TL;DR: 1️⃣do less 2️⃣obsess over quality 3️⃣work at a natural pace. The book reflects on some of the greatest achievements in human history in art, science, ideas - and how the people who accomplished these feats (Jane Austen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Isaac Newton, Jewel, to name a few) worked on them slowly, deeply, and over a long period of time. As someone...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
I have yet to meet an agency that actually uses their project management tool to its fullest extent, especially its more basic and important feature: Task Aggregation. In Asana its called "My tasks". In ClickUp it's called "Assigned to me" (living under "My Tasks". (If you are using Basecamp - I can't help you. Get out of there!!!) Most agencies are using their PM tool as a fancy place to dump projects. They usually have this ambitious setup from two years ago when someone got excited about...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Before I built systems for creative agencies, I organized homes for a living (yes, just like Marie Kondo 🪄). I had my lil solo organizing business for a few years, and I loved it! Just me, a client, their chaotic home office, their seventeen years of accumulated paper they were "definitely going to sort through someday." Good times. One of my brand photos from my old organizing business: Discover Space Organizing ❤️ cuuuuute A few years in, I started doing some Online Business Management on...
2 months ago • 3 min read